Win7 rogue svchost.exe CPU hog

bonzodog2

On several of my laptops I have noticed this happening at seemingly random intervals. A svchost process will start up and use all of 1 core on a C2D machine, also use typically 700MB of RAM. I can kill it off from TaskManager, but sometimes it'll come back, and the machines are mostly unattended, running Folding@Home protein simulations.
When running, this process has a serious effect on the performance for the F@H client.

Fysh

Best bet is to run Process Explorer when the problem happens, it'll let you see what that particular instance is actually doing.

200motels

bonzodog2 wrote: »

On several of my laptops I have noticed this happening at seemingly random intervals. A svchost process will start up and use all of 1 core on a C2D machine, also use typically 700MB of RAM. I can kill it off from TaskManager, but sometimes it'll come back, and the machines are mostly unattended, running Folding@Home protein simulations.
When running, this process has a serious effect on the performance for the F@H client.

More than likely you have a virus, run malwarebytes, download Emsisoft Emergency Kit and see what it brings back. Also have a look at this.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/abnormally-high-cpu-usage-from-svchostexe-solved/eb38d25d-6bb2-47cd-80f2-5389c62337be?auth=1

https://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/eek/
https://www.malwarebytes.org/mwb-download/

bonzodog2

Thanks 200motels. I think a virus is unlikely as most of the machines are only running Folding@Home from a clean install onto a blank disk.

200motels

bonzodog2 wrote: »

Thanks 200motels. I think a virus is unlikely as most of the machines are only running Folding@Home from a clean install onto a blank disk.

More than likely but check just in case.

Quite possibly the Windows Update service hogging memory. Microsoft have released a hotfix:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ie/kb/3102810

bonzodog2

Thanks Karsini, I'll give that a try. In the meantime, I'm working around it by disabling updates and running in Safe Mode with Networking.

chainsmoker556

Safe Mode with Networking has limited features. It can disable sound for example.
It is better to turn off updates since it can eat a lot of memory and may hard to load programs upon startup.

bonzodog2

Its not a general purpose solution to the problem, but for my purposes, a non-interactive, CPU intensive task, it works fine!

Bongalongherb

This is correct. The hotfix will fix the svchost problem, as I had this problem a few weeks ago and it fixed it.

Karsini wrote: »

Quite possibly the Windows Update service hogging memory. Microsoft have released a hotfix:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ie/kb/3102810